Bless Those Who Curse You

I'm eating breakfast at an out of town hotel and drinking my morning coffee before I hop on a plane back to Dallas. This week has been an enormous lesson in "bless those who curse you." One of my most intense dislikes in human personality is passive aggressiveness, especially from people who claim to be blunt.

For example, I'm quite content if somebody doesn't like me, but I would appreciate the courtesy to just say it rather than be passive about it and make small, snide remarks here and there. Yet, I have to be patient and kind to those people too, even if I know that behind my back they are trying to push me out or cut me down. As much as it pained me, I turned the other cheek to somebody like that this week, and then walked into a room and received a hammering from that person. He of course will never realize the favor I did for him, but I have to be content with that. To seek recognition for my charity would diminish its nobility, but for whatever reason I have a resentment brewing inside of me over the whole matter.

 That is the selfish portion of me that I have to bring under increasing control, and force it into submission to that inner voice of love. In order to succeed in the relationships I have with those who I love, I must be able to love those people I do not like. For if, as I believe, Christ was the archetype of the inherent goodness and value of all mankind, and if he who hates his neighbor has hated Christ, then it follows that he who has hatred toward one neighbor has hated all. And I believe that genuine love is only possible when it is universal, for only then is it rightly rooted I unselfishness rather than self interest. If it is the case that I dislike a person, it is likely for some selfish reason- I simply dislike his company, that is, I view it as unpleasant to be with that person, for example. Yet that dislike cannot translate into malice or disregard, the latter perhaps being the most heinous, since it seems the most excusable while causing us to become callous and unaffected.

It appears to me that if I am able to fully love a stranger, then it enables me to devote myself in love to those precious few people who are closest to me. Only then will I be able to put all of their needs and all of their concerns above my own, thereby fulfilling the command "love one another as I have loved you."